


all the things we never said

by xxx_cat_xxx



Series: Whumping Tony Stark [35]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Banter, Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Feelings, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Natasha Romanov, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Recreational Drug Use, Sickfic, Team as Family, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Vomiting, Whump, mcu canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24627940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxx_cat_xxx/pseuds/xxx_cat_xxx
Summary: Five times Nat and Tony watch over each other and the one time they don't need to any longer.
Relationships: Natasha Romanov & Avengers Team, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark, Tony Stark & Avengers Team
Series: Whumping Tony Stark [35]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1072683
Comments: 137
Kudos: 217
Collections: Favourites (BQuincy)





	1. Trust Issues

**Author's Note:**

> It took me a year, but I finally finished the fic I've been wanting to write ever since I got to know Tony and Nat. I hope I did them justice―and I hope you enjoy this story!
> 
> Huge thanks to [Whumphoarder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whumphoarder/pseuds/whumphoarder) for being the world's best beta reader and my personal punctuation fairy. And thank you, [QuietlyImplode](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuietlyImplode/pseuds/QuietlyImplode), for the support and motivation along the way. This one's for you!

It’s their third mission together, but the first one they have to tackle alone. Cap, Hawkeye and the Hulk are off defending Bulgaria from a sudden invasion of slimy goo monsters, but Nat has been planning this mission for months. She fought Fury tooth and nail to go through with the original plan until he begrudgingly agreed and sent Tony along for backup. 

So now it’s her, alone, inside the Hydra base instead of a team of two, and Tony is waiting outside in the forest with the quinjet, growing more restless every minute. 

“JARVIS, how long?” he asks, twirling a box of Tic Tacs between his thumb and index finger. He opens the cockpit window, sticking his head out and searching the forest for what must be the hundredth time in the last few hours.

“Agent Romanov was supposed to return to the meeting point seventeen minutes ago,” the AI replies matter-of-factly. 

“Twenty and I’ll go in,” Tony decides, letting out a long breath. “I told her she shouldn’t have gone alone.”

“Sir, the whole point of an undercover mission is for your identities to stay hidden. No offense, but neither your face nor your suit would contribute to that aim.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” Tony sasses back. “But I’m not gonna wait outside while our resident Scary Redheaded Assassin is getting murdered by a group of neo-nazis.”

“That is quite an honorable sentiment, sir. However,―” 

The AI doesn’t get a chance to continue, because at that very moment Tony makes out a familiar black-and-red shape emerging out of the green of the forest. She’s moving quickly―though not as quickly as he would have liked her to. Even from this distance he can see that Nat’s acquired a limp at some point during the three hours she was inside the base.

“Jet!” he thinks he can hear her shout even before he can clearly make out her face. 

“What?” he calls back. 

“Start – the fucking – jet!” 

Tony, of course, doesn’t listen. The suit is open next to him, already waiting, and he doesn’t hesitate a second before he gets inside and fires up the thrusters. There is no chance in hell anyone would mistake the red-and-gold armour for anything other than Iron Man, but something about the fact that Nat is currently being followed by at least a dozen Hydra agents tells Tony that their cover was blown long ago. 

He dials up to top speed, rushes over Natasha’s head and fires a round at the agents behind her―not enough to kill, but enough to hold them off for a while. Then he swoops down, and, for once glad about the lack of comms and his inability to hear her protests, scoops Nat up under her arms and flies her directly onto the quinjet. 

The landing through the half-open door is less elegant than he had hoped for. Nat ends up more or less crashing onto the ground while Tony quickly curbs the speed. When he opens the suit, the assassin is still lying there like a heap of bones, making no attempt to move—which, given her usual alertness, is frankly alarming. 

“Nat? You alive over there?” he inquires. 

The heap moves and her face becomes visible, paler than fresh snow against the dark red of her hair. “Get us out of here.”

“How bad are you―” 

“I’m fine,” she snaps with obvious strain in her voice.

“You're supposed to be better at lying.” 

“Stark. Start the fucking jet.” She glares at him, which is much less scary now that she’s practically lying on the ground, but still enough to make Tony turn on his heels and get into the pilot seat. 

It’s a good thing he does, because the Hydra agents have apparently recovered and are less than half a mile away from the jet now, carrying heavy artillery. Tony lifts them up just in time and, resisting the urge to fly a victory lap over their heads since time is a priority now, evades the guns with an elegant loop. 

Maybe not the best idea, because the plane swerves and Nat’s body hits the jet’s opposite wall with an audible thump. She doesn’t cry out, but he knows she wants to from the way she gasps sharply before cutting herself off. Tony curses himself and concentrates on pulling the quinjet up at a gentler angle. The moment they reach flight level, he puts it on autopilot and heads back to check on his teammate.

Nat has maneuvered herself into a half-sitting position, leaning against the wall, but that’s about it. There’s blood on the ground around her, and more is marking the path she slid across the floor. Her breaths are coming out in small gasps of barely concealed pain. 

“That’s not looking too good, Widow,” Tony remarks while retrieving the first-aid-kit out from its storage unit in the wall. 

“Neither is your face.” She delivers the prepubescent insult with an expression so straight that it’s almost comical, before weakly stretching out one arm towards him. The left is curling around her stomach, blood spilling out in between her fingers in small gushes in rhythm with each breath. “Here, take this.” 

There’s a pen drive in her opened palm. Tony has to grin, and there’s a weak smile on her sweaty face too, because this means she was successful after all. He stores the pen drive in the pocket of his track pants, then crouches down and starts to remove Nat’s jacket. 

“What was the problem, huh?” he asks conversationally, mostly to distract her from the pain the movement must be causing her. “Someone recognised your phenomenally inconspicuous hair colour?”

“Fury’s fucking bullshit intel,” she says hoarsely, voice tense. “Gonna have a word with him when we get back.”

“I’ll be sure to clear out before that happens,” Tony remarks. He carefully helps her lie down on the ground, using her jacket as a makeshift pillow. “But I’d pay a fortune for the video.” 

Nat weakly flips him off, but Tony is suddenly too distracted trying to find the bullet hole in all the blood to continue the sass. “We need to take off your shirt,” he assesses, his voice sober now. 

There’s a beat where she just looks at him before clumsily starting to peel it off. There’s a lot in that look—doubt, calculation, resignation—and in the end he’s not sure whether it’s trust that’s winning her over or the knowledge that she doesn’t have any other choice. And that hurts a little, somewhere deep inside, because he couldn’t care less about Nat’s boobs while she is bleeding out in front of him. But then again, the circumstances in which they met probably put him in a less than favourable position. 

Nat is visibly having difficulty lifting her arms, so he helps her pull the shirt over the head, careful not to touch any more skin than necessary. There’s so much blood underneath the fabric that he wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else even if he’d wanted to. Tony knows first aid in theory, but he’s never had to use it on someone with a bullet wound, never really had much contact with blood apart from his own. The last time he was in a similar position, it was Yinsen taking his last breaths under Tony’s hands in a cave in Afghanistan, and _no_ , he’s so not going there now. 

“Okay,” he says, taking a deep and measured breath. “What do I do?”

With muttered instructions, Nat guides him through assessing the wound. They decide that the bullet has to stay in for now. The next friendly hospital is only half an hour out, but she’s fading fast, lost way too much blood, and putting pressure on it has priority until they arrive. 

“You could have just waited a few weeks and gone in with backup, you know," he comments while ripping open a packet of gauze, mostly to keep her talking; he doesn’t honestly expect anything he says would alter her stubbornness.

“Now where's the fun in that?" She slurs the words a little around the edges, but the sass is enough to reassure him that she’ll be alright.

Nat talks Tony through applying a pressure bandage, her body shaking more and more underneath his fingers, revealing just how much willpower it’s taking her not to pass out. Sometime around the point when Tony applies the last of the bandages, Nat’s eyes slip closed and her body goes limp in his grasp. She’s pulled through—through the procedure just as the mission—and Tony feels the weirdest swell of pride well up in him at being part of her team. 

Nat stays mostly unconscious when he contacts the hospital and starts the landing sequence. Tony carefully dresses her in one of Cap’s spare shirts, because you never know what kind of pervert will be filming their arrival. It makes her look a bit like a child wearing her father’s clothes. 

She wakes with a gasp when the paramedics enter and lift her onto a gurney, and Tony makes sure to stay in her field of vision to give her a familiar face to look at all the while until they enter surgery. 

As soon as the doors have closed behind her, Tony pulls out his phone. He’s gonna have that word with Fury himself. 

*

Three months later, when he reads a report about Natasha being shot on a solo mission and refusing anesthesia during the surgery at the local hospital, it dawns on him that the reason she let herself give into unconsciousness this time is because somehow, somewhere, there had to be a glimpse of trust. 


	2. Red Wine Stains

There was a time in his life when Tony used to like galas. Or maybe _like_ is a bit of a strong term―he used to enjoy looking at dressed-up people and being looked at, flirting a little here and there, and, most importantly, the drinks. He definitely used to like the drinks.

Today, he wishes he could have some of that glamorous feeling back, just to get his adrenaline pumping a bit. The past week held a Doom Bots attack and a sewage robot gone wild and the launch of the new Stark phone and a fight with Pepper and a Dum-E malfunction, and it’s only Thursday. The wine is cheap, the food tasteless, the people boring, and Tony is _tired_. Fall-asleep-under-the-car-he-is-repairing kind of tired, because yes, that has happened before, much to Pepper’s dismay. 

But exhaustion is not something he admits to people, so sunglasses and make-up are his beloved companions this evening, closely followed by the group of misfits that moved into his tower not too long ago and are currently gathered around him, answering the questions of at least a dozen TV crews enclosing them in a semi-circle.

Thor, in a suit that seems to be from the 19th century and nevertheless look stylish on him, is telling a story about a gigantic wolf he once taught to play fetch, with Bruce nodding along, looking awkward as ever. Nat is wearing a stunning high-slit white gown, red curls made up in a fancy bun. She has been having her fun this evening introducing Steve to an endless number of pretty admirers, just to leave him alone in the middle of the conversation, much to his embarrassment. 

“And now a question for Iron Man,” the aritificially cheerful reporter announces, turning away from Thor and towards Tony. “Mr Stark, there were rumours that you underwent a heart surgery at the end of last year. While I’m pleased to see that you’re back in action, I’m curious to know whether you’re concerned that your health issues affect the Avengers’ capability to defend us in case of another attack like the one of New York?”

Tony steps forward while the crowd of onlookers falls silent. The reporter pushes the microphone into Tony’s face, but the motion seems to slow down as it happens, the world coming to a screeching halt around him. 

_Breathe_ , he thinks. _Just breathe, you got this._ And then: _What if they come back? What if you aren’t strong enough? What if you can’t defend anyone this time?_

“Mr Stark?” the reporter asks again. 

_Breathe. In, out,_ Tony tells himself. _Come on, it’s not that hard._

“I, uhm…” He licks his lips, dimly aware of the cloud of reporters around him, the journalist in question regarding him with a frown. More aware though of his shaky hands, the sweat gathering on his forehead, his speeding heartbeat. “I think…”

_In, out. In out. Inoutinoutinoutin―_

“I think I can answer this for him,” Natasha takes two steps towards him, reaching for the microphone, and the next thing he knows, she stumbles on her high heels and knocks her glass of cheap Burgundy all over his extremely expensive suit jacket. There’s _ohhs_ and _oh my gods_ coming from the crowd of reporters. Nat pretends to apologise and then all he can hear is his own ragged breathing while she is pulling him away towards a side door. 

“Tony―” she starts, a hand on his arm. He takes a step back, reflexively, his back hitting the wall behind him. 

“I’m f-fine,” he gasps, trying in vain to get his breathing under control, “Just a sec.” 

“I know, Tony,” she says calmly, not judging, not freaking out. He knows he shouldn’t, either. And he wants to calm down, god does he want to, but he’s past that point now, his heart galloping in his chest and his breaths turning into wheezes.

“I can’t―” 

Fight or flight kicks in and he stumbles away from her without caring where he is going, aware only of his racing heart and the ever-tightening grip around his chest until she pushes him through yet another door into a bathroom and Tony’s legs go weak under him. He sinks to the floor, wheezing. Hugs himself, clutching a hand to his chest. 

There’s no oxygen, no fucking oxygen in this room, and Tony needs to get out, needs some fresh air, but he can’t even get up right now. He’s going to die for sure, weeks before his 43rd birthday, on the floor of a men’s bathroom with red wine soaking through his shirt, and what a headline this will be. 

“You’re not dying,” Nat says, fierce and still almost annoyingly calm, and god, did he really say that out loud? Tony has just enough wherewithal left to feel a surge of embarrassment. “You’ve been through this before,” she continues. “You’re gonna be okay.”

The room is getting blurry around the edges and he knows that he really needs to breathe, but he’s got no idea how to get there. And then Nat kneels down in front of him, removes his tie and opens his shirt buttons with quick fingers, and there’s just the slightest bit more air getting into him with each wheeze.

Suddenly, his mouth is watering. Tony hunches over and Nat can just slide out of the way before he heaves up two mouthfuls of wine, coffee, and bile, coughing and choking as he does so. _This is bad_ , he thinks dimly. He hasn’t been sick from a panic attack in a while now. He draws in a choking breath and then another and another before retching again. 

He really doesn’t want Black Widow out of everyone to witness him like this, but at least Nat doesn’t say anything stupid like “just breathe” or “calm down” or try to hug him, and that’s a marginal relief. What she does is cower down next to the puddle of sick and take Tony’s hands in hers, almost gently, and then presses them rhythmically. “Focus on that,” she orders, and, left with no other option, he does.

After minutes that feel like years, it finally becomes a little easier to draw in air. Panting, Tony rests his head back against the wall, his whole body bathed in sweat. Just breathes, in and out, while the bathroom slowly comes back into focus. He holds on to Nat’s hand for another minute or so, almost afraid he’s going to lose his tentative grasp of his mind if he lets go. It takes a while until he gathers himself enough to pull away from her. 

“Now you’ve got something for the paparazzi,” he says halfheartedly, trying to calm the trembling in his body.

She looks at him, not missing a beat. “Nah. Panic attacks are way less sexy than drug orgies. No coke, no headlines.”

Tony lets out a breath. “No luck for me then.” 

Nat gets up and starts pulling paper towels from the dispenser to clean up the mess on the ground. Her dress, Tony realises only now, also suffered in the red wine stunt. 

After a few more breaths, he makes it unsteadily to his feet to help her. She stops him midway, takes the sleeve of his suit jacket and wipes tears he didn’t notice before from his cheeks, a sober, almost kind look on her face that he’s not seen before. It confirms his suspicion that this wasn’t her first time seeing someone panic, and something makes him wonder whether she’s been on the other side as well. 

“Let’s get back to the action,” he tries to sound convincing as he makes for the door, then remembers the palm-sized red wine stain on his own shirt. “Or maybe I’ll get this cleaned first.”

“Like hell you’re going anywhere right now.”

“But―” 

“Nope.” With a movement faster than he can blink, she fishes his phone out of his suit jacket (purely showing off, because he knows she’s got her own communication device hidden away somewhere in that fancy long dress). 

Tony makes a weak attempt to snatch the phone back, which she doesn’t even acknowledge. The screen lights up upon receiving her fingerprint and she seems almost disappointed that there’s nothing to hack into. 

“Nat here,” she says into the speaker. “Meet us at the back entry.”

Tony can hear Happy grumpily giving an answer from the other side.

“Yes, the back entry. No, nobody’s hurt.” She raises an eyebrow at Tony. “No, Happy, you don’t need a gun. Meet you outside.”

They keep silent until they’re in the car. Tony is used to being the one to start conversations around Nat―around almost all the Avengers, actually―but the panic attack left him completely drained and somehow he doesn’t feel the need to pretend otherwise.

“You know,” she speaks up once they are halfway through Manhattan. “Steve had a breakdown when it was snowing last winter. Full-on flashbacks and all. Took me an hour and a bucket of tea to calm him down.”

Tony turns his head towards her, trying to keep his face neutral while she goes on. “Bruce sees a therapist once a week.” She hesitates, as if weighing whether to disclose anything else or not. “Clint and I… let’s say we’ve been there, too. We all know what it’s like.”

He swallows. “This… doesn’t make it any easier.” 

“I know that. But it means you’re not alone with it. It’s not a weakness, Tony.” 

“I never said it was.”

She regards him knowingly. “Do me a favour and get some sleep tonight, okay?”

Tony thinks of the laundry list of things he has to finish and of the talk he and Pepper have to have before he can ask her to stay with him when he goes to sleep, both of which―talking and sleeping―he’s been putting off for _reasons_. But Nat’s right―it has to happen at some point. 

“Yeah, okay.” Then, after a moment, “Thanks, Nat.”

"Thanking me?" Nat raises an eyebrow. "You sure you didn’t have too much to drink?”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get used to it,” Tony grumbles. 

“You owe me a new dress and another chance to set up a date for Steve,” she states. But when she looks at him, her eyes are warm.

*

The next day Nat convinces JARVIS―with help of some useful computer skills she picked up over the years―to disable all alarms and let Tony sleep in. At the breakfast table, she regards the newspaper Steve left lying around after coming back from his jog. The headline talks of the Black Widow’s inability to walk in high heels, and Nat, who did a roundhouse kick on four-inch stilettos just the other week, quietly smiles to herself.  



	3. Matchmaker

“Hey, Big Guy.” Tony rests an arm on Bruce’s shoulder, startling the scientist out of his chair by the hospital bed. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s finally asleep, I think,” Bruce answers quietly, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes.

“Damn.” Tony shuffles closer to the bed and looks at Nat, all frail and small in between a nest of blankets. She is deathly pale, except for the red fever spots on her cheeks, and her eyes are almost vanishing in the dark rings below them. There’s an oxygen cannula under her nose, and despite theoretically knowing that it had been bad, that pneumonia is something that regularly _kills_ people, the seriousness of the situation hits him only now. “Damn, Bruce, she looks so _young_.” 

_Too young for all of this_ , he doesn’t say.

“I know,” Bruce sighs. “Trust me, Tony, I know.” 

“‘m not asleep,” Nat protests belatedly, blinking an eye open and slowly turning over to them. “Hi.” She raises an eyebrow at Tony.

“Hi, disease monkey.”

“Fuck you, Tony.” Her voice catches on the last word and she tries to clear her throat, but ends up coughing, and then hacking, hunched forward over herself, until Bruce helps her to a half-upright position and holds her there until the fit subsides. No one mentions the flecks of blood on her hand when she pulls it away.

Bruce hands her a tissue and frowns down at her. “You know, this wouldn't have happened if you'd taken proper care of yourself.”

“Well,” she croaks, “Next time I infiltrate a Hydra prison, I’ll make sure to take a fluffy blanket and a hot water bottle along with me.”

Tony chuckles even while Bruce throws up his hands. “Why am I doing this job again?” the scientist complains. “I should just get a LinkedIn profile and be with people who don’t actively try to get themselves killed once a week.”

“You should get a _nap_ ,” Tony interjects. “You look like you’re about to join her.”

“I’m just tired,” he retorts.

“Which is why you should sleep, Big Green. Clint will be here in a couple hours and I’ll stay with her till then.” Tony nudges Bruce aside and settles down on the plastic chair next to the bed. “I got this.”

“You got what?” Nat croaks, but then redirects her gaze at Bruce. “Really, go sleep.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Bruce fidgets with the monitors. “You should take something before I leave—your temp’s almost up to 103 again.”

Nat rolls her eyes while Tony comments, “He’s terrible, isn’t he? How come you haven’t killed him yet?” He leaves a dramatic pause. “Oh, right, immortality and so on.”

“You’re _so_ funny, Tony,” Bruce retorts, without any heat.

He hands Nat a fever reducer and helps her sit up enough that she can swallow it with a sip of water. Then he leaves, emphasizing again to call him in case anything happens.

“He likes you, you know that?” Tony drops casually once he’s gone.

“What are you doing here again?” Nat just gives him a look that’s probably supposed to be threatening but is mostly just tired, and doesn’t reveal any surprise at Tony’s observation. Tony might be good at reading people if he concentrates on it, but Nat is a natural. 

“Before you murder me with one of the knives I know you’re hiding somewhere in this bed, I’ve come bearing gifts.” Tony looks around to make sure Bruce is gone before pulling Nat’s tablet out of his leather jacket. 

“Ah.” She doesn’t say thanks, but her face lights up a little. While she texts Clint and probably hacks into some country’s police reports to make sure the aftermath of her mission was handled successfully, Tony goes to get a big mug of coffee and his own toy to fiddle with. 

The tablet has disappeared once he returns, undoubtedly hidden in the same place as her knives. Nat, meanwhile, is trying hard to hide the shivers now wracking her frame. A glance at the stats shows that her temp has ignored the fever reducers and hit 103, so it’s probably a good thing she put the tablet down on her own; Tony is not the person who’d like to try and convince her to rest. 

“You can leave,” she tries once more. “I’m fine on my own, and Bruce must be asleep by now.” 

Tony really wishes he could read her, just to know whether she actually believes he would go if she just asked him enough. 

“I would,” he says lightly. “ _Buuut_ , Pep kicked me out of the lab and this is the best pretense to keep upgrading my new gauntlet watch design.” He nods down to his own tablet he just produced.

It’s not true, strictly speaking; before coming here he’d been immersed deeply in SHIELD’s classified video feeds, observing Clint conduct the evacuation of the prison Nat managed to open for them the previous night. But that’s nothing she needs to know for now. 

Nat doesn’t seem entirely convinced, but gives up arguing. She flaps her hand tiredly. “Knock yourself out.”

A few minutes of silence and she’s coughing again, her whole body shaking under the strain of it. This time, she hacks up strings of red-tinged mucus into a small basin that was waiting on her bedside table. Tony isn’t one to comfort sick people and Nat isn’t one to accept comfort from anyone but a select few, so instead of putting a hand on her back and telling her she’ll be alright, he goes to grab another pillow that she can put behind her back to prop her up. 

“Water?” she asks when she can catch her breath again. 

Tony hands her a glass, then takes the basin with a barely concealed look of disgust and disposes of it in the sink in the adjacent room. “Try and catch some shuteye?” he suggests when he returns. 

Nat just shakes her head and clenches her teeth when another round of chills passes through her body. 

He recognises the look on her face. Bone-deep exhaustion, but still fighting against sleep, most likely because of the fever dreams. Been there, done that. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the Hydra goons wouldn’t touch Nat in the almost two weeks she spent in the prison until she gave the rest of the team a go for the mission. 

She’ll eventually have to talk to someone about whatever was done to her, but Tony isn’t that person. Neither of them is good with talking, not the serious type, anyway. She maybe―hopefully―has Barton for that, and Tony… has his bots. Well, and sometimes, when he’s drunk and tired or drunk from tiredness, he might have confessed a thought or two to Pepper. Most of it she figured out by herself. 

He shakes himself out of his thoughts. “So what are we gonna do then?” he asks.

“You’re the genius. Figure it out.”

She’s definitely too weak for video games and Tony’s not going to read to her, which leaves the TV. They’re in the tower’s medbay, so of course there’s plenty of streaming services to choose from, which only leaves what to choose. He knows that Nat hates cheap romances and likes Tarantino, but maybe a bloodbath is not the best after what she’s just been through. They both enjoy intelligent movies, but he probably shouldn’t do anything too taxing with her fever through the roof. 

“JARVIS, play Sherlock. The BBC series.” 

The corners of her mouth lift a little and he knows it was the right decision. 

If it had been Pepper or Bruce or even Clint, Tony wouldn’t have hesitated to crawl into the bed next to them. He craves touch when he’s ill, even if he doesn’t admit it, but he’s learned long ago that Nat’s different. So he just settles in the plastic chair next to the bed, makes sure the corners of the room are well lit, and increases the temperature enough for her shivers to finally ease down. 

She fights it, but finally falls asleep half an hour into the first episode, snoring ever so slightly through the congestion in her chest. Tony knows that not everyone’s nightmares are as visible on their faces as his own, but he thinks that despite the exhaustion and sickness, she looks a little bit more relaxed than before. 

After another ten minutes, Nat slides down the pillows and her nasal cannula slips out of place a little, so Tony bends over her to put it back. Her eyes snap open the moment he touches her face, alert and wary despite being bright from fever. 

“Easy tiger, just putting this back where it belongs.”

She nods minutely and her eyes slip back closed, her ragged breathing still a bit faster than before. He thinks she’s maybe fallen back asleep, but then she blinks again and mumbles something indiscernible.

“Huh?” Tony asks.

She doesn’t open her eyes when she mumbles, “I’m gonna die anyway.”

Tony swallows. “Come on, don’t be so dramatic.” 

“Not...now. But the thing with Bruce...this isn’t going to work. Either I’m gonna die or I’m gonna disappoint him. Don’t even know what’s worse.”

The thing is, Tony knows how it feels to have someone who is too good for you love you nevertheless. And he wishes he could tell her that she’s wrong without feeling like he’s lying. 

By the time he’s finally found his reply, she is already asleep again. 

“But you deserve to be happy,” he whispers into the air anyway.

*

Three hours later, Tony will be interrupted in designing his watch gauntlet by a very disheveled looking Bruce coming to check on Nat. Tony will follow him outside when he searches for his stethoscope, and, with a smirk on his face and a bittersweet feeling in his stomach, will tell him, “She likes you, you know? You should ask her out some time.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As most people in this fandom, I feel very ambiguous about the MCU's forceful attempt at using their only female team member to incorporate some romantic D-plot into AoU. Thus, although this fic is canon-compliant, that's basically the only time Bruce/Nat will be mentioned. But I still had a lot of fun writing the dynamics in this chapter...


	4. Stoners

Nat extricates herself from the blankets with an agility acquired through years of experience in sneaking out of crowded dorm rooms without waking anyone. Bruce is asleep on the couch in Lila’s bedroom, curled a little into himself, looking rumpled and exhausted after today’s hulk-out. He passed out the moment his head touched the pillow, and Nat is honestly surprised he even made it through dinner. 

But there is no sleep for her tonight. Closing her eyes means going back to the places that the witch summoned up in her mind, and that’s something she really, really doesn’t want to do. 

Nat tiptoes down the wooden staircase, avoiding the legos littering her path and the creaky third step from the top. Clint would be her go-to person, if any, on nights when she feels like this. But Laura just got him back and it would be unfair to steal him away for something nobody can fix anyway. 

She commandeers the heavy booze in the highest cupboard behind the digital kitchen scale Laura never uses. She is in the process of filling a glass when, through the screen door, she sees the light coming from the garden. 

Nat finds Tony in the shed where he’s actually repairing the goddamn tractor. She isn’t particularly quiet while entering, but Tony still flinches when she taps him on the shoulder, raising the wrench in a gesture of defense. There’s something dark on his face, a feeling exactly matching hers. Nat hasn’t asked whether the witch has shown him something, too, but she thinks she can read the answer in his eyes.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks, a little more casually after lowering the wrench, but his breathing is still too quick. 

“You’re one to talk.”

He snorts. “Cap’s snoring like a steam engine. No wonder he doesn’t have a girlfriend.” Nat grins, but she knows of course that’s not the real reason. 

She’s never told him, but once or twice she’s witnessed Tony waking from his nightmares on the couch in the common room or in the jet after a mission, whimpering, almost crying, barely able to catch his breath. His reason to not fall asleep in a room he shares with his teammate is the same as hers. 

She takes another sip from her Whiskey and then refills the glass before handing it to him. He downs it in one smooth motion and sets it on the dirty ground nearby, gesturing at her to refill before turning back to the tractor. 

“Can you fix it?” she asks, genuinely curious. The tractor has been in the garage for as long as she can remember, never working, so still that it's almost become part of the building itself. 

“I can fix _anything_.” It’s his go-to reply, and it’s a lie, but tonight she wishes it was the truth. 

Nat settles on a rusty paint can nearby while watching him work, taking sips from the bottle intermittently. His hands are moving over the vehicle like a doctor’s over a patient, both professional and intimate. There’s motor oil on his bare arms and dust coating his forehead and as much as she knows Tony loves his good looks and classy suits, now he doesn’t seem to register the dirt at all. There’s something cathartic about the way he completely immerses himself in the task. 

Nat does that sometimes when she has a bad night, or the few times Clint was laid up in medical with no visitors allowed. Goes to Tony’s lab and watches him fix things, build things, neither of them talking as is their way. Sometimes she finds herself waking up hours later on the lab bench with a stiff neck and a blanket over her shoulders to Tony proudly showcasing whatever he has finished.

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he’d say and present her with a new set of Widow’s Bites or a more explosive arrow or a thicker uniform for Clint to keep him safe next time. 

He doesn’t look as satisfied now when the tractor finally starts tucking, and she suspects he wished for it to take longer, for more distraction in a night where the dark thoughts hang between them like thick clouds. 

“So, should we take this thing and drive it up to Clint’s window right now?” he asks while turning on the tap in the corner of the barn and washing his hands and face with cold water. 

“Sounds tempting,” Nat admits. “But I got a better idea. I know where Clint keeps the pot.” 

“That, Miss Romanov”―Tony spins around and points at her with a screwdriver―“is the best idea I’ve heard in days.”

They smoke on the old canopy swing on the porch, and Nat would like to say that it makes her feel better, but sometimes sadness is just a part of you that doesn’t go away. They share the silence like they share the joint, each contemplating their own ghosts. 

Nat’s thoughts circle back to the Red Room again and again. And she wonders: Why does it still hurt, after such a long time? Maybe because it illuminates what went wrong, where it went wrong, and because it makes all the other possibilities so clear. The alternatives she never got to live. What it would have been like to have a happy childhood. Parents who cared. No blood on her palms. How it would feel to live without the crushing weight of debt and death on her shoulders. 

The funny thing is that Tony might be the one who understands the feeling best. Clint knows her, knows more of her story than anyone, but he also knows―or at least, thinks he knows―where she is wrongly blaming herself, where her mistakes are not her fault anymore. For him it’s a battle she fought against the powers who wanted to make her someone else, someone horrible, and eventually she won. But on nights like this one, Nat doesn’t feel like a winner. 

And Tony, below his cocky arrogance and narcissism, still carries the guilt from his previous life around with him. They don’t talk, but as the bottle and the smoke circle back and forth between them, she gets the feeling that he has an idea of what’s going on in her head.

The night air grows colder around them and at some point Tony takes off the rough button-down he’d borrowed from Clint and wraps it around her shoulders, and tonight, just tonight, she lets him. Allows him this single gesture of chivalry because he does it out of kindness, and kindness is not something found in the memories that lurk beneath the surface, and because she knows it will make him feel like he did something right. 

When the smoke has turned to ash and the bottle is empty, Tony slides down a bit and leans his head on Natasha’s shoulder. If he’d done this when they first met, after her cover was blown, she would have punched him. Now, it feels almost good. His head grows heavy against her skin after a while and his breaths even out, the drugs and the many days without sleep finally catching up with him. 

Dawn breaks and brings with it an aura of finality, of something big drawing to its close. Nat has lived through so many endings and beginnings that it doesn’t scare her anymore. But she’s still human enough to feel sad. 

She thinks of a little red-headed girl in a huge hall with glass mirrors, turning and twisting under the ever-critical gaze of people who should have never been her replacement parents. Thinks of her, years later, taking lives without second thoughts. So many lives along the way. 

And if there’s a tear or two running down her cheek and dripping into the collar of Clint’s shirt that night, nobody will ever know. 

*

An hour later, when Tony has woken up in her lap and squinted at her and asked, “So, what do we do about the murder bot?” and Nat has mustered all her strength to store the memories away for the time being and fire up her brain cells, Laura will step out to hang clothes on the line in the yard. She will find them like this, frozen-through, exhausted, and more than slightly hungover, but with a battle plan.  



	5. Blueberry Muffin (the time they don't)

Natasha is not good with kids—never has been—so she is not surprised when Tony looks a bit wary as he hands his sleeping daughter over to her. She is even less surprised when the baby wakes up, regards Nat through her dark, thick eyelashes, and immediately starts to cry. 

“Here. Give her here,” Tony says, and Nat is happy enough to comply. Morgan’s sobs turn into hitching breaths and she brings her tiny fingers to her face, making discontented sounds at the back of her throat. 

Tony shushes her, almost automatically, and Nat feels a strange mixture of affection and sadness bloom in her chest. He looks at Morgan with a warmth in his eyes she recognises from the first time they met. It’s the same way he’s looked at Pepper for as long as Nat’s known him. Nat knows what it means: he’d do anything for the tiny person in his arms. It’s not something she’s ever felt for anyone, and certainly nothing anyone has ever felt for her.

“So.” He clears his throat. “How’s life at the compound? More interesting than changing diapers, I suppose?” 

_Empty and lonely_ , she doesn’t say. “It’s a lot of work.”

He scoffs. “You and Captain Righteous against the rest of the world?” 

“Steve’s staying in the city,” she replies briskly. She knows Tony is just trying to provoke her, since Rhodey is surely keeping him updated about everything there is to know about the remnants of the team. “He’s running counselling groups, actually. I don’t see him that often.”

“Therapy with Captain America.” Tony snorts, bitterly. “Lesson One: Be honest with your friends. Lesson Two: Choose your side wisely.”

In a life before Thanos, Nat might have started an argument upon this sideblow, but losing half the world’s population put things into perspective. She’s simply too tired to react. 

Tony seems to realise that too, because he gives her a defiant glance and loses steam. Morgan makes a fussy noise and he softly runs his fingers over her head until she quiets again, burying her forehead in his t-shirt. It’s some kind of nerdy shirt with triangles and geometry equations on it, and the baby is drooling onto the Pythagorean theorem. 

The silence grows from uncomfortable to oppressive while Nat tries to think up what else to say about a kid that only sleeps and eats and cries.

“So, have you enrolled her in MIT yet?” she finally asks.

Tony musters a laugh that’s probably mostly meant to humour her. “Thought we might potty train her first.”

Nat musters a half-hearted grin.

Pepper enters the room, saving them. “Have some blueberry muffins.” She sets a plate on the table in front of her. She is as neat and pretty as ever, even with an infant to take care of, making Nat acutely aware of her own unwashed hair, the worn-out leggings she didn’t bother to change before coming here, and the deep circles below her eyes. 

A phone rings somewhere in the other room and Pepper is on her feet again before even properly sitting down, but not before adding, “Tony made them.”

Nat stops dead in the middle of reaching for the muffin. Then she slowly turns towards the man in question. “You bake now,” she states, and it almost sounds like an accusation. 

And here’s the thing: Nat and Tony used to be founding members of the ‘Why Do I Even Own a Kitchen’ clubt. Nat is good at cooking because she had to learn it for undercover missions (nothing like chocolate mousse and a low-cut dress to seduce a target), but she’s never, ever done it for herself. Or for the team, or for anyone who doesn’t require her to. Tony considered it superfluous since he had enough money for takeout at any time of the day, which he never ceased to mention when asked. Their hate for this particular activity is one thing they had in common, along with flexible moral standards and their love for fast cars. 

“I dabble.” Tony shrugs lightly. “It helps, you know, to distract yourself. You would be surprised how cathartic it can be sometimes to watch an apple pie turn brown in the oven.” There’s a dark shadow on his face that makes her realise just how bad these _sometimes_ get. 

_Guilt_ —oh yeah, here’s another thing they both share. 

She takes the muffin and bites into it. It tastes horrible, which makes the whole situation only slightly more bearable. She understands now that when Tony pushed the arc reactor into Steve’s hands the day he returned from space, it wasn’t just Iron Man he said goodbye to. He renounced a whole way of life, and with it, all those who were a part of it. The one he leads now makes space for superheroes only in crayon drawings and bedtime stories. 

Nat glances around in search of a new topic to start in on, but all she sees are baby photos, throw blankets, and handmade toys—all in soft, matching colours. Wooden walls and bamboo boxes, the opposite of the cutting edge interior design that used to be Tony’s preferred choice for the tower and compound. The lakehouse reminds Nat of the Barton farm, of Laura’s attention to make the smallest details homely. 

Suddenly, the domesticity of it all feels suffocating. 

“I―” she breathes out. “I need to go.” She sets down the muffin and takes a last look at the baby in Tony’s arms before getting to her feet in a rush. His halfhearted protests are lost in the sound of her heartbeat drumming in her ears. She passes Pepper in the hallway, who regards her with confusion and a bit of hurt. Nat’s throat is too tight to talk, but she sends a mental apology her way because none of the bad things that keep happening in her life have ever been the fault of Pepper Potts. 

Tony catches her when she is just about to close the car door. There’s honest surprise on his face when he glimpses the tears on her cheek. She wipes them away, angrily, silently dares him to say anything. 

“Look, this is the best possible way for me to deal with everything,” he explains, and his face looks almost like he’s in pain. “To get over what happened. Maybe you should try that some day.”

 _And here’s the final difference_ , Nat thinks as she closes the door and starts the engine. The thing he has to get over with was what made her life worthwhile.

“I’m happy for you, Tony,” she says honestly, and drives away.

*

10 years later, Morgan will scroll through old news footage in her holographic projection on the ceiling and find a photo of Nat and Tony, dressed up for one of the official Avengers events, sharing a laugh over something that’s lost to history. She’ll show it to Pepper and will listen disbelievingly to a story, told with wet eyes, about an assassin masquerading as a PA, who eventually became a friend masquerading as a teammate.  



	6. Time Travel

None of them sleep the night before the time heist, but at some point, sharing the anxiety makes things worse instead of better. They break up the group, pretending to go to bed. Nat hasn’t been in her own room since everyone moved back in; she’s been sleeping in Clint’s quarters or occasionally on the couch in the common room when the planning and plotting went on late into the night.

Years of going rogue have left their trace on Clint, and despite having lost none of the familiarity—that wordless understanding that has been between them forever—there are more and more times now when she senses his need to be alone. Tonight is one of them. So, instead of trying to sleep, she wanders aimlessly through the compound until she finds Tony sitting in the dimly-lit common room, staring out of the window in a rare moment of stillness. The helmet of his Iron Man suit is lying next to him on the table, blinking silently.

“Don’t turn the lights up,” he says hoarsely when she enters. Even without that warning, she would have recognised the crease in between his brows and the gesture with which he is pressing two fingers to his temple. Bad headache. Maybe even a migraine.

She doesn’t say anything, just steps near the chair and gives his shoulder a squeeze. They stay silent for a while until he shifts stiffly and turns toward her. 

“What would you do?” He looks up, really looks at her. “What would you do if this was potentially the last night of your life?”

Something in her heart clenches, although she can’t pretend that she wasn’t thinking the same. She settles on the arm of his chair before replying. “I’d spend it with my family.”

Tony looks at her wistfully. “I talked to Morgan earlier,” he says in a neutral voice. “Told her a bit about you all. She wanted to know every Avenger’s favourite ice cream flavour.” He shakes his head in disbelief, then winces at the pain it must be causing. “You know, before her, I’d forgotten how good humans can be. Literally innocent, before the world takes all that away.”

Nat huffs. “I don’t believe in innocence.”

“Well, she _did_ try to trick me into bringing her back a ninja star.” Tony smirks.

Nat grins. “Now that sounds more like she’s related to you.”

“So…” he sighs. “In the improbable case that this goes down well and we don’t end up with Jack the Ripper or in the middle ages, I wouldn’t mind coming up here more often. And you should meet Morgan again―I mean it. Never too early for female role models.”

He squints up at her in the challenging way that is meant to hide his insecurity, and she knows what he is really asking for.

And Nat doesn’t say ‘ _You really think so?_ ’, doesn’t admit to her surprise or the warm feeling welling up in her chest. But she preserves it, somewhere in her heart. 

“Sure,” she agrees instead. “But I can’t guarantee that I won’t give her a ninja star or two.”

“I think I can deal with that.” Tony rubs his hand over his eyes in a tired gesture. “So, tomorrow’s the big day. I’m gonna try and catch some shut-eye.” He gets upright, all colour draining from his face like it just flowed down into his feet. Nat’s hand shoots out to steady him, but he’s already caught himself on the armchair. “Or maybe I’ll go and puke first.”

She frowns, trying to judge whether he’s serious or not―it’s a 50-50 chance with almost anything he says―but then he gulps heavily and starts walking towards the toilet, supporting himself against the wall. 

Nat sighs as she gets to her feet, and, of course, follows him. 

He flinches against the bright bathroom lights and then opens the cabinet, squinting at the labels of the different medications lined up there until Nat takes pity in him and picks the right one. They've been there before, spent a whole night in this very bathroom once when one of Tony’s migraines hit so hard he didn’t want to move for hours. There's a reason Nat always kept up his stock of Imitrex—same with Clint’s Neosporin, and Steve's Zantac.

(Maybe she never really stopped hoping they’d come back.)

Nat shakes a pill out onto her palm and hands it to him along with a glass of water. He swallows and then lowers himself down next to the toilet, face in his hands, breathing carefully through his nose to keep himself from being sick. 

When the immediate danger seems to have passed, Tony leans his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. Nat can’t stop thinking how much he has aged, all the lines in his face turned into valleys and the gray and black in his hair balancing each other out. He’s got 15 years on her, but Nat was never as aware of the age difference as she is today. 

He looks old and tired, but also... Nat would have never thought that _soft_ would be a word she'd one day use to describe Tony Stark, but, looking at him in worn-out jeans and a wrinkled hoodie with a few sprinkles of glitter on them (undoubtedly courtesy to Morgan), that's the only word coming to her mind right now. It’s a different kind of softness than what he displayed during her one and only visit to the lakehouse. It doesn’t feel like a desperate escape strategy now, more like something he has grown to be without being aware of it himself.

Nat gets quietly to her feet, wets a washcloth and drapes it over his eyes, blocking out the lights. He grunts gratefully. She hesitates for a second, but then reaches down and starts kneading the tense muscles between his shoulders and neck. Tony makes a low sound in his throat somewhere between pain and pleasure. But he lets her be, and she feels a smile spread on her face. 

“I forgot how good that feels,” he sighs when she’s done, squinting up at her. “Pepper never really gets the pressure right.” He swallows. “I missed this,” he adds, and she knows he doesn’t just mean her massage skills. 

“Me too,” she quietly admits what she’s been thinking for days. 

“I’ll just”―he weakly waves his hand―“enjoy this bathroom for a bit longer. Feel free to leave.”

“Nah, I’m good here,” Nat assures. She settles down next to him with her legs crossed, not too close, not too far. “Remember that one time we all got food poisoning from that burger joint Steve insisted was the best in Brooklyn? And Bruce was the only one who didn’t eat them, and then he just ran between different bathrooms the whole night?”

“Hell, don’t remind me.” Tony groans. “Clint puked on my Prada pajamas. Had to incinerate them.”

“Your own fault for buying branded nightwear,” she retorts. 

They keep sitting and talking in low voices, and Nat doesn’t feel the desire to move, doesn’t feel the urge to let this night pass. It’s stolen time, all of it, a few days of glimpses into the life they had and that they always knew would never last. They all are aware that it’s going to end tomorrow, in one way or another. But just for now, she allows herself the illusion that it could last forever. 

*

Less than 12 hours later, Natasha has turned into a martyr, and Tony finally understands that she did get to spend her last day with her family after all.  



	7. The Passage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter, and I would be lying if I said it wasn’t kind of sad―I might have teared up a little myself while writing this. But just remember that this is just one possible universe out of millions, and that there are so many more in which their story ends differently. 
> 
> Reading your comments every day has been my personal highlight of this past week. Thank you all for sticking around until the end―your support means so much!

Waking up without pain anywhere in his body is a feeling so unfamiliar to Tony that it immediately puts him on edge. His eyes snap open, his heart beating hard and fast in his throat, and there’s something important that’s slipping his mind, something vital, and he–

He looks around himself, and he’s in his Malibu mansion. The one that Killian Aldrich bombed to the ground almost ten years ago.

It doesn’t make sense.

There’s a boxing ring set up in the middle of the room, and on it, sitting cross-legged, her long braid in red and gold hanging over her shoulder, is a familiar figure. 

It can’t be. 

“Natasha?” Tony asks, and she looks up at him. 

And then Tony _remembers_. 

By the time he gets his wits back enough to come up with a joke, Nat has slipped out of the ring between the ropes and is holding him in her arms. She’s young as ever, but something in her eyes makes Tony feel like she’s aged years since the last time he’s seen her. 

“So this is Hell, huh? Less gargoyles than I imagined,” he quips. “And I was hoping for a better view of the Lake of Fire.” 

“Oh, we’re not in Hell,” she replies calmly, pulling back. “At least not yet.”

“Where –” Tony breathes, “Where are we then?”

“It’s like a passage,” she replies. “Neither here, nor there.”

“Okay. Fine. Great.” He runs his fingers through his hair, trying to get his speeding breaths under control. “Run me through the whole thing.”

“After I jumped from the cliff at Vormir, I came to an agreement with Red Skull,” she explains. “He’s...he’s like a guard to whatever comes after. He let me wait here until… well, until someone came to let me know.”

“Let you know?” Tony echos. 

“If it was worth it.” She looks up at him, for the first time seeming as scared as Tony feels. “Was it, Tony?”

“Yes.” He nods, trying to pull himself together. He thinks of Peter and his heart jumps in triumph. “Yes, it worked, Nat. We got them back. All of them.”

“But something went wrong, didn’t it?”

He sighs. “Something always goes wrong. ” He walks her through what happened after the time heist, replaying the memories and almost unable to believe them himself. “I just― I snapped. And Pep-Pepper. Rhodey. They all were there, and―”

“Breathe, Tony.” Looking at him with both sadness and pride, she stretches out her hand to wipe something from his cheek, and Tony realises then that he is crying. 

“I,” he mumbles, his breath hitching. “I need to sit.” 

She leads him to the boxing mat and sits him down. Then it hits Tony, really hits him what this all means. 

Because he will never teach Morgan how to fly the suit he secretly designed to give her on her eighth birthday. He will never ruin Pepper’s cooking again. He will never watch over Peter when he goes patrolling, will never snatch away Rhodey’s ice cream, will never share a late-night highway drive with Happy again. It’s gone, all of it. _He’s_ gone. 

He’s crying like a child, unable to stop himself, and Nat hugs him without hesitation, holds him close. “S-Sorry,” he manages between sobs. She shushes him and strokes his back.

“It’s alright. I’ve been there too,” she whispers. 

“There are so many things I wanted to do,” he chokes out after a while. “S-So many things I didn’t get to share with them.” 

“I know, Tony.” She hesitates. “But they know too. Tony, you saved them. You saved them all.”

And he thinks back to Yinsen, to _Don’t waste your life, Stark_. To everyone he lost, everyone he outlived, everyone he killed. And he thinks, _perhaps I didn’t do so bad after all_.

Nat must have been having similar thoughts, because, in a quiet voice, she says, “Maybe I finally cleared my ledger.”

“Nat, what are you talking about?” he sniffs, wipes his face, and then takes her fingers into his hands, holds onto her tightly, sincerely, “None of this would have been possible if you hadn’t gotten the soul stone. We owe you. The whole _universe_ owes you.” 

And here’s the final thing they share; they have both eventually settled their debts.

The waves are hitting at the shore outside in an endless rhythm of clapping and splashing. It’s a long time until either of them speaks again.

“So,” Tony asks eventually, and the tears have dried on his cheeks, leaving only salt behind, “you chose the setting?”

She offers the tiniest of smiles. “I thought you might appreciate the touch.” 

He knows that they are both thinking the same. Who would have thought, the first time they met each other, on a day when Tony was drinking chlorophyll and Nat pinned Happy onto the mat, that three-and-a-half potential apocalypses later they would end up here again? 

“We can’t stay,” he says. It’s not a question. 

“No,” she confirms, nodding towards the opposite wall. 

There is a door at the end of the room, heavy and wooden and ancient, that doesn’t belong with the mansion―neither in Tony’s memory nor from the looks of it. 

“What’s behind it?” he asks, although he already knows the answer. 

“Whatever comes next.”

“Maybe it’s nothing,” he says.

Nat swallows. “Would that even be so bad?”

He turns towards her. She looks ready, at peace, but also sad. And besides knowing it’s worth it, besides knowing that they both wouldn’t hesitate a moment to make that very same choice over and over again, he wishes that they’d had more time. 

They get to their feet and walk to the other end of the room. The gate seems to grow taller as they approach it until it takes up almost all of Tony’s vision. Next to him, Nat stretches out her hand and lets her fingers glide over the carvings in the wood that form patterns of leaves of a tree he doesn’t know the name of. He follows suit. The wood feels soft and warm under his touch. Alive. 

“Are you scared?” she asks. 

He shakes his head. “Not anymore.” And it’s true. Tony has been afraid for so many years of his life—ever since the sky above New York was torn apart. And now, he seems to be feeling everything all at once: grief, gratitude, and acceptance, wonder, loss, and love. But the fear is gone.

“Let’s go?” Nat squeezes his fingers and then lets go of his hand. And he knows, this is a step they must take on their own. 

He breathes in deeply. Takes a last look around. The sea, the house, the light reflecting in the red of Natasha’s hair. The calmness in her wide green eyes. He reaches for the handle of the door. “Okay.”

And they step through.

**Author's Note:**

> The fic is completely written and will be updated daily. I would love to hear what you think about it in the comments! You can also find me on [tumblr](https://xxx-cat-xxx.tumblr.com/).


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